The enemy within
Let us think together as we walk up the 365 steps into the U.S. Capital. Imagine for the first part of our journey that we are actually walking through time. Each step of our mythological trip takes us to the eighth century BC of Homer’s Odyssey and the battle to capture Troy. The 10-year battle only ended after clever Odysseus convinced the Trojans that the Greeks had admitted defeat, gone home and left the colossal wooden horse to honor the courage of the people of Troy.
Come out of yesterday into today with your final step. A Republican wooden horse is there. This horse is decorated with the banners of noble men and women: Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Ulysses S. Grant, Dwight Eisenhower, Nancy Reagan and hundreds of other Republicans ... supporting civil rights, protecting the environment, promoting economic fairness and advocating health programs.
Inside are Maga Warriors dedicated to the destruction of America! Since July 4, 1776, we have survived 12 wars. These new warriors, unlike the Greeks, are not armed with swords and lances but with the promise to enact laws: a national ban on abortion, make gay marriage illegal, end climate change programs, put the Department of Justice under control of the president, change Social Security retirement age from 68 to 70 by adding two months per year to 70, reduce benefits to the 62 million in Medicare and 82 million on Medicaid.
The 900-page Project 2025 written by 140 former employees of Trump is a project of the Heritage Foundation. It calls for a fundamental change in government. The aforementioned facts are only the tip of the spear that would accomplish what the enemies of democracy have been unable to do for 248 years. Vote to save democracy!
Stan Smith
Viola
Defeat these Washington initiatives
One of six initiatives introduced by Republican-allied group Let’s Go Washington, Initiative 2081 would give parents and legal guardians of public school children under 18 years old certain rights, including to examine textbooks, curriculum and any supplemental materials used in their children’s classrooms.
Although that’s innocent language in normal times, the 2024 Democratic-majority state Legislature was understandably suspicious of Republican motives. So they passed a similar parental “bill of rights” that removed the initiative from the upcoming November election.
Two other initiatives were Legislature-handled similarly. So three of the initiatives remain for November voters: Initiative 2117 prohibiting carbon tax credit trading; Initiative 2124 allowing individuals to opt out of paying the tax for long-term health care; and Initiative 2109 repealing the capital gains tax imposed on gains over $250,000. All must be defeated, especially the one repealing the capital gains tax that funds all-important early-childhood education.
Recent uptick in the school parental rights movement has largely been driven by banning books and dictating teachers’ curricula, including eliminating unpleasant aspects of our racial history. But students, particularly the most mature at high school and college level, generally oppose these actions. They want books covering a range of subjects and the whole truth from their history classes. Even organized student protests have occurred along these lines.
When educator Cory DeAngelis says, “Now kids have a union of their own — their parents,” he errs. Indeed, it is just the opposite: kids deserve their own union that opposes anti-education efforts characteristic of the parental rights movement.
Norm Luther
Spokane
Bibi’s speech
Bibi Netanyahu spoke to a joint session of Congress recently. Old news now. He received 58 standing ovations during the course of that bicameral event. (Ninty elected members, to their credit, refused to attend.) But the vast majority of them did, and were they enthusiastic! It was totally over-the-top.
I thought of trained seals, taught to bark and clap their flippers on command. Seals are rewarded with buckets of fish for their performances. Senators and representatives get buckets of money as their reward, mainly from AIPAC.
We pledge allegiance to the flag and to the republic for which it stands. What “republic,” I ask? Our elected politicians in Washington, D.C., swear fealty to a foreign flag, not our own. And they do it, not out of loyalty to a foreign secular ideology or set of religious principles, but for the cash. It’s all about the Benjamins, baby!
Any respect I may have had for the U.S. government before Israel’s jug-eared prime minister spoke vanished forever after that. (It was residual, at best, anyway.) Any leftover patriotism I may have felt earlier in life for this great country was over. If, indeed, God has shed his grace on thee, America, the last outpouring of such grace ended that July evening.
How could this happen? How is it that a country of 330 million people, whose material and economic achievements have never been equaled historically, whose natural resources are vast, whose military is, or at least was, the most powerful in the world, whose semi-colonial reach has extended to every corner of the globe, beggaring even the once mighty Roman Empire, could fall victim to a tiny little nation whom a French ambassador once described as “that sh—ty little country” in the Middle East? I don’t know. But to say it hasn’t happen is to belie facts on the ground.
Timothy Moore
Potlatch
Project 2025’s plans for ag
I found Janet Marugg’s letter (Lewiston Tribune, Aug. 4) detailing the impact Project 2025 would have on farmers and ranchers to be a stunning work of citizen-led investigative journalism. If you can get access to this letter, read it and cringe at the effects these policy goals could have on our farmers, ranchers and rural communities.
Her deep dive into this chunk of the 900-plus-page playbook made it clear how ALL of us will be affected by Chapter 10’s plans for U.S. Agriculture. For example, Janet discovered that Project 2025 thinks farmers are receiving too much protection from risk and proposes restricting safety nets to “unusual situations” (p.297), doing away with existing federal insurance programs that buffer against the USUAL risks of unpredictable weather and fickle market conditions (Agriculture Risk and Price Loss Coverage, Federal Crop Insurance). Goodbye conservation and easement programs.
She also found that nutrition support programs (think school lunch, WIC) would be moved out of Agriculture into Health and Human Services, but hey, when she went to the HHS pages, they were not there. Neither was she able to find them or any agriculture-related planning in Agenda 47 (Trump’s plan) or anywhere in the RNC platform. Janet even gave us references to the Democrats’ plans (Farmers.gov and Rural.gov) so we can compare and contrast.
Let’s follow Janet’s example and bite off a little chunk of the Project 2025 document, education, health care, whatever. If you need a quick overview, check out The Peoples’ Guide to Project 2025 (democracyforward.org). They read 900-plus pages so we wouldn’t have to in order to get a sneak preview. Then, consider writing a letter to the editor to help us all — Republicans, Democrats, independents — understand what vision for our future is being proposed.
Thank you Janet for your service.
Steve Swoope
Colfax
Main Street may scream ‘Kirker’
I confess, I see little of value in the Faustian offering of Christ Church. It can’t provide the music of the spheres of the ancients. It cannot make water into wine. Even Chief Necromancer Doug Wilson, working to paint a culture of patriarchy and other obsessions, confuses converts with success.
Of greater concern is the real estate gambit underway in Moscow. Disappointed by the numbers in the pews, and their subsequent polling, the goal switched from souls to square feet. The next decade may see fewer entrepreneurial business startups that don’t ascribe to the devil’s contract. The future face of Main Street may scream “Kirker” as we say goodbye to the secular storefront. Jesus may never have subscribed to capitalism, but worldly theologians generating from our homegrown Christian Nationalists have bigger plans than that humble Jew ever imagined.
Zena Hartung
Moscow
